


The Devil's Water, It Ain't So Sweet

by eleutheria_has_won



Series: Prompt Me! fills [8]
Category: The Underland Chronicles - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Emotional Manipulation, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-29 01:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3877918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleutheria_has_won/pseuds/eleutheria_has_won
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have a complicated history, Twirltongue and Twitchtip; so complicated that it threatens to reach all the way out of the past to poison all it touches.</p><p>Twitchtip had been the first.</p><p>"How about Twirltongue and Twitchtip when she was captured and put in the pits (I saw this pairing on FF.net once ok don’t judge me)"</p><p>[[From a Prompt Me! on thecityofregalia.tumblr.com . Head there if you want to submit a prompt of your own.]]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil's Water, It Ain't So Sweet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ibelieveinfiction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ibelieveinfiction/gifts), [stingerpicnic (ibelieveinfiction)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ibelieveinfiction/gifts).



“Oh, hello, there,” Twirltongue purred, peering over the edge of the pit into the shadows below. “What an interesting find.”

Twitchtip didn’t move. By pressing back against the cold stone in this particular spot, she could get the mottled bruise on the underside of her ribs against one of the smoother spots on the floor at just the right angle. The icy rock was the closest she could get to relief from the constant, low level ache. That was the reason she didn’t move, and it was the only reason. 

Averting her eyes and saying nothing, though, that  _was_  deliberate.

Twirltongue sighed through her teeth, an expression of malicious pleasure. “Taken in while protecting a human pup, they tell me. How low,” Twirltongue mocked, “have you fallen?” Her disgust was only somewhat feigned. 

Twirltongue, Twitchtip knew, had detested humans ever since they were pups growing up in the tunnels around Gorger’s court. That Twirltongue’s dam had died going over the edge of the Gorge in pursuit of the Warrior had only honed the edge on that bitter, vituperative hate. 

“No lower, I think,” Twitchtip said, “than you.”

They had a past together, them two. Twitchtip had been an orphan, kept alive at Gorger’s court for her occasional use to him, despite the fact that very few people had any fondness for a half-grown girl who could sniff out their secrets. Twirltongue’s dam, Slashsoothe, was a high-ranking fanatic in Gorger’s service who taught her daughter by proxy the art of serving a king. One couldn’t quite say they’d been friends - but they’d known each other too well to be strangers.

“Ha!” Twirltongue barked out, her real laugh - as usual - more grating than charming, melodious giggle she put on for her scheming. “ _You_  really think you can judge _me_?” Once, she had danced to the tune of that giggle. Twirltongue had always had such a lovely voice.

Twirltongue had been her mother’s charming little spy, playing her little manipulations and bringing the results back to Slashsoothe’s feet, fodder for the dance of politics. And behind Twirltongue, always at her back (the better to skulk in her shadow) like a faithful hound, had been useful, friendless, outcast Twitchtip, muttering all the secrets and controversy told to her by her nose in Twirltongue’s pretty ear. 

Twirltongue had been the first one to make Twitchtip think about the ambiguous, uncertain concept known as love. When Twirltongue - beautiful, well-liked, sly - had turned her eyes on Twitchtip, it had felt uncomfortable, too tight in her skin; vaguely scorched. It had been a helpless fixation, a plunge as perpetual as the need to breathe. She could no more have escaped Twirltongue’s orbit than Mercury could have pulled away from the Sun long enough to cease being boiled alive. They’d been an inseparable pair.

Twitchtip had been Twirltongue’s first pet, and all she’d learned about breaking someone to heel, she’d learned by practicing on her.

Now, they were here. “I do,” Twitchtip rasped. 

Herself, battered and broken, crouched uncomfortably at the bottom of a pit so she pressed the cold rock to her bruises. 

Twirltongue, as assiduously gorgeous and saccharine as ever, with a lunatic’s crown on her leash where a grimy, half-grown scentseer who never thought she’d be worth anything had once craved to be. 

“What?” Twirltongue laughed, melodic and lovely.  “I’m sorry, did you-”

“I can,” Twitchtip said, hoarse and broken. “And I do.”

Twirltongue’s giggling faded, her grin becoming fixed as her delighted confused shaded to anger. “You were defending a human!” she said shrilly, “You were captured in the name of a squalling useless killer!”

“I was,” Twitchtip said calmly. “I don’t regret it.” The pup Boots had escaped. The Regalian queen had fled. Gregor - whose had saved her life, who had reached out to her, who was a killer among killers - would see his littlest sister again. 

Twirltongue snarled, angry and vicious. She hissed, “You are a  _traitor_  to your species.”

Twitchtip coughed out a sad, wry chuckle. “Maybe.” 

Twirltongue’s eyes narrowed. “You will die here,” she began to hum in a low, seductive voice, “Forsaken by all, sacrificed for nothing. When we ravage Regalia, that squalling brat will be eaten - the young are always such  _tender_  meat. You’ll starve knowing that…unless you submit to the Bane’s mercy. He is a wise king,” she purred coaxingly, “And a just one. He could have a lot of use for you. Isn’t that what you want, Twitchtip, to be of use?”

Twirltongue was beautiful. She was sleek, and she was well-fed, and she was arguably the queen of a sizable portion of the gnawer race. She was clever, and she was charming, and she could make anyone fall in love with her. She hoarded power like the starving hoarded food. She was utterly convinced, through long experience, of her own beauty. She was at least three times more convinced of her own righteousness.

“I, at least, will die with my dignity,” said Twitchtip, looking up at the woman that the girl who’d held her leash had grown up into. “But I can not say the same for you.”


End file.
